"A blog is to a writer what a canvas is to an artist." ~ Colleen Redman

For my 60th birthday (today!) I soaked in a tub of weightlessness. Floating on what felt like a heated cloud of jiggling jello, I had a cold cloth on my forehead and someone was massaging my feet. I had dinner with a Scottish man who was at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-in for Peace, and breakfast with a renowned golf course architect and his wife. I sipped a St. Bernardus beer on tap in a pub with titled glasses that looked like they were falling over and tasted skate wing for the first time.

For my 60th birthday I stayed in a room with aboriginal art and a vase of pink orchids. I met a lovely woman from France and another from Switzerland. I met my daughter-in-law’s sister’s husband’s brother, a couple of fellow local writers, the editor of Blue Ridge Country Magazine, and a reporter from the Chicago Tribune who gave me a pen.

At nearly 3,000 feet above sea level, I wrote in my notebook by a roaring fire, blew out a single blue candle on a carrot cake cupcake made my by favorite baker, and opened a present wrapped in bluebird of happiness paper. I looked out onto mountain views covered in rolling mist, and might have seen galaxies and quasars from a telescope in an observatory that looks like a silo if it hadn’t been so foggy last night. Joe might have played golf, but because it was raining he took a rain check.

There is no rain check for turning 60.

Post notes: All this happened at Primland Resort, off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the next county over from Floyd, where I was invited to cover a story on their new spa. This is the backstage story teaser. The second photo is of the dry float soft pack I tried. Hopefully I’ll catch my breath soon. Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Colleen. Sounds like a wonderful day and I was lapping up your exquisite details of your spa day and surrounding. I turned 60 in November and my kids had a surprise card shower. The surprise was on me when I started getting nice letters a month before my birthday and decided I must be dying and no one told me as I was getting mail from people who would have only written if indeed I was dying!
Remember my sweet Colleen : The older the fiddle the sweeter the tune.

[…] The little boy, whose birthday is three days before mine, joins me in saying thank you for all the birthday wishes, gifts, and fun. Two-year old Bryce in his own words: HERE. My birthday post is HERE. […]

Yea, Colleen!!!! May the rest of your life be as wonderful as this time seems to be. You seem truly happy, and I am glad to be sharing it with you. If expressing yourself creatively keeps you young, you are on the road of a long and lively life.

[…] Note: For more information about The Spa at Primland visit http://www.primland.com, call 866-960-7746 or 276-222-3800, or email info@primland.com. Read my back story on my experience at the Spa HERE. […]

[…] 9. For my 60th birthday I soaked in a tub of weightlessness. Floating on what felt like a heated cloud of jiggling jello, I had a cold cloth on my forehead and someone was massaging my feet. I had dinner with a Scottish man who was at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-in for Peace, and breakfast with a renowned golf course architect and his wife. I sipped a St. Bernardus beer on tap in a pub with titled glasses that looked like they were falling over and tasted skate wing for the first time. Read the conclusion to my 60th birthday post HERE. […]

About

From the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia I write to synthesize what I'm learning at the time, whether it be poetry, a political commentary, or a letter to my mother in Hull, Massachusetts, where I'm originally from. Whenever I don't know exactly what it is I'm doing and it borders on wasting my time, I call it research. 'Dear Abby, How can I get rid of freckles?' was my first published piece at the age of 11.